How’d we get into this mess?
Early History of U.S. Drug
Laws (1898-1933)
by Bob Ramsey
The roads to Hell and unlimited
(unconstitutional) government are
paved with good intentions. Every so
often, folks just like your and me decide they are so smart and self-righteous, that they can solve “problems”
with unconstitutional laws.
Drug laws are a good example.
Constitutional crimes consist of damage to another person or another
person’s property. Use of marijuana
or cocaine may harm the individual
user, but don’t normally damage another person or property. Hence consensual drug use is not a constitutional
crime. Nevertheless, some self-righteous individuals decided to save us
from ourselves and instituted a series
of unconstitutional drug laws and penalties. But after two generations of our
“holy drug war”, do we have less drugs
or more police?
We can debate whether the original motivations to pass our drug laws
were benign or cynical. But one thing’s
sure: no matter why a law was passed
— even if that law is soon seen to be
impractical, unreasonable, or even irrational — government will expend
endless taxpayer energy, wealth, resources and individual liberties to,
somehow, someway prove the law
“works” rather than admit that law was
stupid, destructive and call for its repeal.
Why is it so difficult repeal stupid laws? Because most modern laws
A NTIS HYSTER
serve special interests (a limited constituency) rather than the General Welfare of the American People. As a result, most modern laws aren’t mere expressions of moral right and wrong.
They are charters for private interests
and government bureaucracies who
profit from the law’s existence. This article illustrates that unconstitutional
laws have self-serving constituencies
who fiercely and effectively defend the
laws that feed them at their neighbors’
expense.
I
believe it is impossible to enforce a law that attempts to control any private behavior in which a significant portion of the population
chooses to participate. I don’t plan to
discuss the reasons why this is so, but
to describe how each failed attempt to
enforce Prohibition laws has led to further erosion of individual liberties. The
bottom-line? For over eighty years
we’ve attempted to give an ever-expanding number of police agencies enough
power to do the impossible. In the process, we’ve come dangerously close to
destroying America.
I will describe a historical thread
of U.S. government attempts to improve
society by controlling the inside of
people’s bodies. Trying (or pretending
to try) to extinguish a market for certain
agricultural products has created coun-
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Volume 7 No. 4
terbalancing incentives for criminal activity in both the private sector and government. Each failure to achieve the
stated goal of “national purity” has fueled cries for more intrusive government
powers and caused some very alarming
trends.
In the beginning
The first federal law that regulated
consumable products was the Pure Food
and Drugs Act of 1906. But the first
time Congress involved itself in drug
laws was after the ten-week SpanishAmerican War in April - July of 1898.
After winning this war, Congress became responsible for the first time for a
colonial empire that included the Philippines. Instead of being mere servants
of a self-sufficient American people,
Congress suddenly became the paternal
master of millions of “ignorant savages”
who were virtual wards of the state.1
And so for the first time, Congress
was forced to deal with a “drug policy”.
The former Spanish government of the
Philippines had a two-part drug policy:
1) government controlled the sale of all
opium; and 2) you could only buy opium
if you were Chinese. Obviously, the
U.S. should have continued, modified,
replaced or abandoned that policy. Instead, America simply ignored this curious situation until the Filipinos rebelled in February 1899, causing us to
take colonialism more seriously. Few
Americans realize that there was a 28-
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month Philippine war involving 50,000
U.S. troops, who killed 200,000 to
600,000 people before we convinced the
Filipinos we were their best friends.2
The McKinley administration sent
the Republican Party’s rising star,
Howard Taft, to the Philippines to
straighten out the mess. Taft was an
energetic and able administrator who
established civil rule and began economic development. His experience in
tackling public problems both in the
Philippines and as President from 190913 is of special interest, since he later
became Chief Justice of the Supreme
Court from 1921-30, where he served
through most of Alcohol Prohibition.
In 1902, Taft established a commission to study the opium policy inherited from the Spanish. 3 The
commission’s leader was Reverend
Charles Henry Brent, a missionary in the
new U.S. possession. Brent was soon
named Episcopal Bishop of the Philippines and ministered to its newly appointed American rulers. He thus became one of the first Americans in this
century to discover that expanding government made for some very exciting
24
career advancement opportunities.
Brent studied the situation and came up
with a plan to continue the Spanish
policy, except with a three-year phaseout period to humanely wean the Chinese of their habit. But when Taft asked
Congress to pass an implementing law,
reformers heard about it. They were
outraged that the US government would
promote this horrible habit in a helpless
population, and persuaded Congress to
insist on total opium prohibition.
In trying to stop opium imports,
Rev. Brent learned that most of the
opium came from Hong Kong, some
350 miles away, and quickly surmised
that opium traffic was international and
could only be addressed internationally.
So he began advocating an international
conference on opium, which won acceptance largely because other nations also
wanted to break British dominance of
opium trade with China.
In 1909, a small international
commission met in Shanghai, attended
by the countries most active in Far East
trade. It settled little, but gave reformers a picture of each participant’s motives. The British and Dutch were making money; the French didn’t care. Indeed the British stated that opium smoking was the Chinese equivalent of drinking liquor or beer, and they had no problem with it. The Chinese wanted to show
they were not to be taken lightly, and
the Americans were seeking their place
as an international power. A larger convention was scheduled in the Netherlands at The Hague for 1910, and was
to include all the major world powers.
But nations like Italy, Turkey, Germany
and Switzerland dragged their feet, and
the next conference was delayed.
Assumptions in the early 1900s
Things have changed so much
since 1900 that today it’s difficult to
comprehend what a free market used to
be like. In the late 1800s and early
1900s, a uniformed federal agent might
bring heroin to your door that you had
ordered from Sears Roebuck . . . along
with the rest of your mail.
Even the wording of the Food and
Drugs Act of 1906 (the first Congressional attempt to regulate consumable
products) is telling. Its literal intent was
to “assure the customer of the identity
of the product purchased, not of its usefulness.” In those days Congress didn’t
consider its place was to judge for the
American people what was useful or not.
Knowing just the components of a product was a major step in helping the
people make informed decisions.
The law called a product “misbranded . . . if the package fails to bear
a statement of the quantity or proportion of any alcohol, morphine, opium,
cocaine, heroin, alpha or beta eucaine,
chloroform, cannabis, chloral hydrate,
or acetanilide.”
Obviously, back in 1906, Congress took for granted the legality of a
free market in all drugs. 4 In fact, when
the Food and Drugs Act was passed in
1906, it was estimated that 3-5 percent
of the adult U.S. population used opiates regularly, mostly in patent medicines whose contents were a trade secret. When people were informed as to
the contents of their favorite remedies,
many people quit using them. The percentage of Americans habitually using
opiates fell to about one percent – virtually the same as it is today if you include users of both illegal and medically
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ANTIS HYSTER
prescribed opiates – but without a police state. And this was in a socio-political climate where just about everyone had some kind of opium preparation in their medicine cabinet, used it at
least occasionally for headaches or diarrhea . . . and must have known feeling
of an opium “high”.
The pause that refreshes
Spanish Conquistadors found the
Peruvian natives chewing coca leaves
when they arrived in 1530. The Spanish encouraged the practice since it made
the Indians work longer in the silver
mines with less food.
Refined cocaine became generally
available to Americans in the early
1880’s. At first, it was greeted with great
enthusiasm. Pure and cheap, it was at
often given to workers in Southern cotton fields to increase productivity. A
Pope and a US president endorsed coca
products. The original 6.5 ounce bottles
of Coca-Cola contained about one grain
of cocaine (an aspirin tablet is five
grains.)
Although Sigmund Freud wrote
enthusiastically about the benefits of
coca use, after two years he decided it
was better left alone. By 1905 it was
considered to be a social problem. Cocaine seemed to make people feel “worthy”. One New York politician complained “It makes working men feel like
millionaires — which they’re not!” Especially alarming to Southerners was
that it seemed to make a Black man feel
just as good as a White man. When
Southern politicians instinctively objected to federal drug legislation on
State’s Rights grounds, they were
quickly brought around by sensational
stories about cocaine-crazed Negroes
raping White women.5
Transition time - 1913-1920
In the early 19-teens, the US’s
new role as a colonial and world power
made Americans think of themselves
more as a nation than a collection of
states. An example of the new “national” thinking came in 1911, when a
certain War-of-1898 Naval-hero-turnedCongressman named Richmond P.
Hobson whipped up enthusiasm among
the Anti-Saloon League (ASL) for National Alcohol Prohibition via a Constitutional Amendment.6 Until then, Prohibitionists had worked one state at a
time — but sometimes states repealed
liquor laws the ASL had worked very
hard to pass. And it drove the Prohibitionists nuts that anyone could order liquor from out-of-state through the U.S.
Mail or the Railway Express Agency. A
constitutional amendment was very appealing. It would be impossible to repeal, and would cover the whole country at once.
In 1913, our form of government
was changed fundamentally in at least
three ways, all of which were centralizing influences: We instituted a central
bank called the Federal Reserve. We
changed the mode of electing Senators.
Formerly Senators were elected by a
State’s legislature; the loss of this power
not only eliminated federal accountability to State governments, but also made
State legislatures less relevant. And then
there’s the big one, something the original Constitution had specifically forbidden: the Income Tax.
The income tax did many things,
but one of its immediate effects was to
break the power of the liquor industry.
Through the 1800s, liquor taxes had pro-
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vided as much as half of all federal revenues. Now, thanks to the income tax,
government could do without the alcohol tax. Congress could afford morality without worrying about the arithmetic. And there was another wonderful feature. For the first time it became
practical to enact a “tax” law that didn’t
generate revenue.
Remember that international
Opium conference that didn’t happen in
1910? Well, America pressed the issue,
and Hague conventions on opium were
held in 1911, 1913, and 1914, slowly
making progress toward a tre aty
whereby signatories would “endeavor”
to control their own traffic in opium and
cocaine. Delegates from forty-four nations signed the treaty, which would take
effect when ratified back home, supposedly by the end of December, 1914. 7
However, few nations ratified because
three days after the convention adjourned in June of 1914, Archduke
Ferdinand was assassinated in Sarajevo,
kicking off World War One.
But the US didn’t enter the war
for almost three years. In 1914, alcohol
– not war — was the big issue. Narcotics was an afterthought. In May of 1914,
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the House of Representatives scheduled
a debate on a Constitutional amendment
prohibiting alcohol for the following
December, seven months away.
The December 22nd, 1914, alcohol debate may not have been the social
event of the season, but it was close. The
House was almost evenly divided for
and against, as were both parties. Everyone knew the amendment wouldn’t
pass because a 2/3 majority is required.
Both sides allotted tickets to the house
gallery, which was jammed and noisy.
Attendees draped the chamber with banners like at a football game. The
Women’s Christian Temperance Union
and the Anti-Saloon League marched
down Pennsylvania Avenue to the House
Chamber carrying a petition with six
million signatures and piled it on the
Speaker’s desk. The debate lasted over
thirteen hours, and fills 125 pages of fine
print in the Congressional Record.8 All
the good and bad arguments for and
against prohibition are in there, and they
are well stated, as you might expect
when seasoned debaters have seven
months to prepare.
Compare all this grand activity
26
with the vote eight days earlier on the
Harrison Narcotic Law: it passed by
voice vote after announcement that the
committee had referred it favorably as a
fulfillment of treaty obligations. At the
time it was considered a record-keeping act, not a prohibition law. It took
the form of a nominal tax, supposedly
generating just enough revenue to support its own administration, on commerce in the specified drugs, with detailed record keeping. Its passage didn’t
even make the newspapers. The New
York Times first mentioned the law in a
legislative summary three weeks later.
But the Treasury Department
seems to have thought it was a prohibition law. I don’t know when they started
arresting people, but they must have
jumped on it like a chicken on a June
bug. The law took effect on March 1st,
1915, and the first court judgement was
handed down in May. The US District
judge in Pittsburgh held the prosecution
of addicts invalid, 9 saying an addict was
not required to register under the law,
so he could hardly be held to possess
narcotics illegally. Another case in
Memphis found it was acceptable to preVolume 7 No. 4
scribe unlimited quantities of narcotics
as long as the required records were
kept. 10 The Supreme Court virtually
struck down the law in June, 1916, saying Congress certainly did not intend “to
make the probably very large proportion of citizens who have some preparation of opium in their possession
criminal.” 11
Treasury agents backed off until
the nation entered the Great War in 1917.
In August of 1917, Congress
passed a wartime act giving the President power to control all “necessaries”
for national defense. 12 This power was
immediately used to shut off grain and
sugar supplies to brewers and distillers,
giving us de facto alcohol prohibition
throughout the war. Since a wartime
prohibition was already in place, Congress was on a roll and sent an official
Prohibition amendment to the State Legislatures in December. The required 37
states ratified it in just over a year. The
18th Amendment was declared ratified
on January 16th, 1919, to take effect in
one year.
Within days, anxious to avoid
driving boozers to switch to narcotics,
Congress modified the 1914 Harrison
Act to close loopholes. This time the
Supreme Court agreed. Less than three
years earlier, the court had said Congress
never intended to make criminals out of
any American who happened to possess
some form of opium. Since it had just
required a Constitutional amendment to
ban alcohol, you might imagine the
court would tell Congress to go get another amendment if it w anted to ban
something else. But now it gave the opium
user short shrift in handing down twin 54 decisions on March 3rd, 1919.13
First the court answered a complaint out of Memphis that the tax was
not really a “tax” but a “prohibition”,
which was unconstitutional. It was decided the Harrison Act was a “tax” (and
therefore constitutional) even though it
had purposes other than raising revenue.
In the second case, a doctor was
charged with prescribing opiates to an
addict with no intention of curing him.
The justices now said prescribing maintenance doses of morphine was “so plain
a perversion of meaning that no discussion of the subject is required”. (Curi-
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ously, while the court asserted that “no
discussion of the subject was required”,
the court was nevertheless split 5-4 in
its decision.)
Although Alcohol Prohibition
soon commanded the nation’s attention,
it was during the four-year transition
from 1919-1923 when Americans lost
the right to control their own medical
treatment.
The revised Harrison law allowed
only physicians (not pharmacists) to prescribe narcotics “in the course of their
professional practice only.” For the first
time, druggists could only dispense on
a doctor’s prescription. Treasury agents
immediately began harassing doctors
who did not adhere to the Internal Revenue Bureau’s strict definition of what
constituted “professional practice”.
During the early 1920s, doctors were targeted for intimidation. Each year, about
200 doctors were convicted, and
“charges were dropped” against about
30,000 more when they agreed to “cooperate”. I don’t know how many U.S.
doctors and pharmacists there were in
the early 1920s, but when 177,000 of
them were threatened with jail, the word
A NTIS HYSTER
got around that prescribing narcotics
could be hazardous to their health.14
With the AMA leading the charge,
doctors fought bitterly to preserve their
freedom to treat patients as they thought
best. The question was finally settled
by a Supreme Court case about alcohol
prescriptions. A group of New York
doctors led by the Dean Emeritus of the
College of Physicians and Surgeons of
Columbia University15 sued the government over the federal maximum prescription of medicinal alcohol, which
was one pint in 10 days regardless of the
ailment. The doctors claimed the rule was
arbitrary, hence unconstitutional. The
court ruled that the 1.6 ounce-per-day figure was based on a survey of doctors,
hence not arbitrary, and further declared
that “the practice of medicine is always
subject to the police power of the state.”
Here the word “state” referred to the federal government. After that, most doctors became politically docile, compliant,
and “correct”.
Thus, in the ten-year period from
1914 to 1924, Americans went from
being in absolute command of their own
medical treatment, with doctors and
pharmacists among their options, to a
condition where medical doctors controlled the people, and the federal government controlled the doctors.
Alcohol Prohibition - 1920-1933
Alcohol prohibition began with
great expectations at midnight, January
16th, 1920. New York City’s Park Avenue Hotel held an elaborate mock funeral for John Barleycorn with comical
eulogies and painted-on tears. But elsewhere that Friday, in churches across the
nation, people stayed up past their bedtimes to celebrate their final victory in a
struggle begun by their grandparents.16
Alcohol was scarce for a while,
but entrepreneurs soon stepped up to the
plate. Americans were not used to sneaking around, and law enforcers had not
learned to suspect them. One early
smuggler was a cab driver who simply
drove his clearly marked New York City
taxi 350 miles north to Canada, loaded
up all the whiskey it could hold, and
drove back to New York with cases of
whiskey plainly visible through the windows. (Smuggling and government sus-
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Volume 7 No. 4
picions have come a long way since
1920.)
But suppliers quickly became
more sophisticated. George Remus was
a criminal defense lawyer in Chicago
who knew how to work the law.17 He
moved to Cincinnati because of its proximity to established distilleries in Kentucky and Tennessee, and bought up
most of America’s best-known whiskey
brands. Then he bribed officials to get
“medical” permits to ship from his warehouses. By the end of 1922 – in just 35
months – Remus made $40 million
($700-800 million in current dollars).
His network of bribes included
$500,000 to the U.S. Attorney General.
Once a detective in Cincinnati recorded
him passing out bribe money to fortyfour public officials in one afternoon,
but for some reason the Cincinnati DA
refused to indict.
Millions of people were violating
the law discreetly. But hundreds of thousands of people were thumbing their
noses at the law, which outraged those
who had worked to create it. They demanded enforcement to “git tuff”, and
soon serious enforcers appeared.
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With Prohibition an embarrassing
failure, law enforcers soon began crying for stronger laws to accomplish their
impossible task. And lots of them made
very creative interpretations of existing
laws in their attempts to keep up with
bootleggers. The Supreme Court
quickly became involved in constitutional issues. President Harding appointed William Howard Taft (who
learned the “drug policy” business in the
Philippines in the early 1900’s) as Chief
Justice. Taft had opposed the 18th (Prohibition) Amendment, but was committed to making it work. As the former
Governor General of the Philippines,
and as President, he understood the importance of having the tools to do the
job.
In 1922, the court decided a case
where the state of Washington had convicted a bootlegger; then Seattle’s federal prosecutor convicted him again for
the same acts.19 The court decided that
since the Prohibition Amendment says
“The Congress and the several states
shall have concurrent power to enforce
this article,” obviously each is independent of the other. They found unani-
28
mously that this did not violate the Fifth
Amendment’s guarantee against double
jeopardy. Under this same legal concept, the Los Angeles police who were
acquitted of beating Rodney King while
he was down . . . were later convicted
for violating his civil rights by beating
him while he was down.
A 1921 case dealing with searches
worked its way to the Supreme Court in
earl y 1925. Two federal agents in
Michigan saw some guys driving by
from whom they had previously, though
unsuccessfully, tried to buy liquor. Without a warrant, they stopped and searched
the car, and — lo and behold — found
sixty-eight bottles of liquor.20 The justices found, 7-2, that the 4thAmendment
only forbids “unreasonable” searches
and seizures, and that these officers had
acted “reasonably”.
This illustrates an important aspect of Prohibition violations, and “consensual” crimes in general. Before Prohibition, police fought the kind of crime
where people would like to pay them
for hanging around. After Prohibition
passed, they were trying to stop the kind
of crime where people would like to pay
them to stay away.
Police discovered that, when the
supposed “victim” willingly (even eagerly) participates in the “crime”, he
didn’t call the cops, so normal (constitutional) law enforcement procedures
simply didn’t work. To have any chance
of success, the definition of “reasonable” police action had to change drastically. Though the word did not exist
at the time, police became “proactive”
-- they’d catch criminals before they
were known to have committed a crime.
And police became very proactive. Another landmark case also came
out of Seattle in 1925. Roy Olmstead
and seventy-four codefendants were
convicted of running a major operation
smuggling Canadian liquor. 21 The evidence was obtained by tapping their
phones, which was against Washington
State law. The defense complained the
evidence was illegally obtained, and
should be thrown out. Indeed, Prohibition agents did not deny they had knowingly broken the law hundreds of times
over a period of months. The Supreme
Court Justices nearly came to blows over
Volume 7 No. 4
this one, but the conviction was upheld
by a five-to-four vote.
All four dissenting justices contributed to the dissenting opinion. This
happens to be the case that contains the
Louis Brandeis quote Timothy McVeigh
cited at his sentencing hearing. Since
McVeigh didn’t get it quite right, I’ll
repeat it here:
“In a government of law, existence
of the government will be imperiled if
it fails to observe the law scr upulously.
Our government is the potent, the omnipresent teacher. For good or ill, it
teaches the whole people by its example.
Crime is contagious. If the government
becomes a lawbreaker, it breeds contempt for law; it invites every man to
become a law unto himself; it invites anarchy.”
In 1932, another Supreme Court
decision was handed down regarding an
accused bootlegger from Eureka, California. James Dunne22 was accused of
possessing liquor, selling liquor, and
possessing liquor for sale. He was acquitted of the first two charges, but found
guilty of the third. His lawyers appealed,
saying — wait a minute, the evidence is
the same on all charges, how can he be
not guilty of possession, not guilty of
selling, but guilty of possession for sale?
Taft was gone. This was Justice
Holmes’ last case before retiring, and he
delivered the 8-1 decision. The court decided that each count must be considered separately, and “Consistency in the
verdict is not necessary.”
Up to that time, it was unusual to
bring multiple charges against a defendant. However, this decision gave prosecutors the green light to pile on as many
charges as they could think of, in hopes
something would “stick”. In the decades
since, this has become a fine art. Last
year I read of a case where one county
official in south Texas was acquitted of
bid-rigging charges. He allegedly arranged $25,000 in bribes on several contracts with a total value of one million
dollars. The newspaper said, “if convicted on all charges, he faced up to 570
years in prison and millions of dollars
in fines.” The possibility of sentencing
a man to five centuries longer than he
could possibly live illustrates the potential abuse and absurdity of “multiple
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charges” – but, perhaps he’d get a few
centuries off for good behavior.
Prohibition’s repeal
Everyone knows Prohibition was
repealed, but not many people realize
that repeal was an extraordinary event.
No other Constitutional amendment has
come close to being repealed. Why did
so many people change their minds?
There had always been a vocal minority who opposed Prohibition “for
reasons other than their own thirst.” The
most influential, the Association Against
the Prohibition Amendment, or AAPA,
was formed a few weeks before the 18th
Amendment was ratified, by Captain
William H. Stayton a 58 year old lawyer, businessman and former Navy officer. He plugged along for several
years, writing letters and making
speeches, with little effect.
But events slowly added members
to the “Repealer” ranks. Henry Joy, the
president of Packard Motor Company,
who had been very active in the AntiSaloon League, lost enthusiasm for the
“Dry” cause the second time Treasury
agents came onto his property and broke
down his elderly watchman’s door to
look for beer. However, he rejoined the
Repealers after a duck hunter in a small
boat was killed near Joy’s riverfront
mansion. A federal agent on the shore
hailed the hunter to stop and be searched
for booze. The hunter’s outboard motor prevented him from hearing, and the
officer picked him off with his rifle as
he put-putted by. 23
Wealthy industrialists had worked
for Prohibition expecting to profit from
a sober workforce. But as Prohibition
wore on, they not only found drunkenness increasing but bullets flying. By
1926, Captain Stayton found influential
people asking what they could do to
help. He reported meeting some “serious businessmen” in Detroit who nodded agreement when one of them declared:
“The people are not very much interested in the question of wet and dry,
but they are very much interested in the
question of the form of government under which they shall live. They realize
that Prohibition is not a real disease, but
merely a symptom of a very great and
A NTIS HYSTER
deep-seated disease – the disease of . . .
centralization of government from
Washington . . . that extends now into
our home and to the dinner table. . . . If
we have five more years of this curse,
there will be fighting in the streets of
American cities.”24
But they were just shouting at the
wind. Although repealers’ numbers
were growing, the Dry’s weren’t worried. Four years later (1931), a Dry
Texas senator boasted: “There is as
much chance of repealing the 18th
Amendment as there is for a hummingbird to fly to the planet Mars with the
Washington Monument tied to its tail.”25
Many people considered Prohibition to
be a natural by-product of Women’s
Suffrage, and this senator was confident
America’s Mothers were on his side.
But many mothers were seeing the
same things as those men in Detroit.
Mrs. Pauline Sabin was active in Republican politics, and had just about decided
National prohibition was a disaster. 26
Police records showed drunkenness
among children and teenagers had increased tenfold. The Salvation Army
reported young girls were coming into
their rescue homes 8-10 years younger
than before. 27 Sabin saw Prohibition
was breeding corruption and hypocrisy,
undermining American youth, and destroying the cherished principles of personal liberty and decentralized government. She later recalled the moment she
decided to fight Prohibition. She was
sitting in a congressional hearing when
the president of the WCTU shouted “I
represent the women of America!”
Sabin thought to herself, “Well, lady,
here’s one woman you don’t represent.”
She worked hard to elect Herbert
Hoover, but then in his inauguration
speech he vowed to fight harder to stop
liquor. In May 1929, she resigned from
the Republican National Committee and
rounded up two dozen of her society
friends to form the Women’s Organization for National Prohibition Reform.
Miss Sabin was a veteran of charity work and the society pages, and
quickly made it fashionable to oppose
Prohibition. In three years her organization grew to 1.5 million members and
finally did Prohibition in. When the
women rebelled, and Republican women
www.antishyster.com 972-418-8993
Volume 7 No. 4
at that, Prohibition was doomed.
Nevertheless, there w as still the
problem of incumbent politicians who had
(between drinks) strongly supported Prohibition for many years, and who had
voted in 1929 to “get tough” by increasing penalties by a factor of ten. Somebody had to protect them from the political consequences of changing their minds.
Their problem was solved when
someone actually read the Constitution
and discovered it provides two ways to
propose amendments and two ways to
ratify them. Amendments can be ratified either by state legislatures or by
special state ratification conventions. By
using the option of state conventions ,
every Congressman was able to stand
up proud and righteous, and vote — not
to repeal Prohibition — but to “let the
people decide” this issue once and for
all. State legislators were off the hook
too, since special elections were held
where communities voted by secret ballot to send either a wet or dry delegate.
The 21st (Repeal) Amendment was
sent to the States in February of 1933.
It wasn’t ratified until December 5th, but
Congress passed the ‘Beer Bill’ in April,
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ALL OF THE TIME!!!
As an advocate in Seattle, I am
often asked to straighten out the
messes created by refusals for
fraud and other groundless
claims. U.C.C., gold fringed flag,
habeas corpus, non-resident
alien-SPARE ME!!! Did you
know that as much as 50% of citations are filed after 48 hours of
issuance and can be dismissed?
Did you know that only a judge
can grant a Bill of Particulars?
Would you rather argue “popular” claims or keep your car? If
you are ready to use procedure
and applicable provisions to keep
your car, liberty, and privacy, then
you are ready for my CD-ROMs
and real help in fighting the motor vehicle laws.
-www.mysticbird.com29
declaring that 3.2 beer was not intoxicating, hence not illegal. So the end of
Alcohol Prohibition is generally seen
as April 4th, 1933.
Laws repealed, powers remain
As a result of a misguided attempt to establish both alcohol and drug
prohibitions, there were several important cases – especially during WWI —
in which the supreme court abandoned
previous stands for liberty and affirmed
very strong police and prosecution
practices. If the court had not felt compelled by WWI and other political pressures to support Prohibition, these cases
might have been decided differently.
It might have been advisable for
the 21st (Repeal) Amendment to reaffirm some of the previous assumptions
about state and federal roles in government. For example Congress was careful to frame the Harrison Act as a tax,
something Congress had Constitutional
authority to do. The “concurrent
power” clause of the 18 th/ Prohibition
Amendment even gave Congress, for
the first time, reason to pass criminal
laws.
But repealers were just trying to
stop a juggernaut, and they couldn’t
risk failure by trying to pass an amendment with a laundry list restating basic
rights. As a result, although Alcohol
Prohibition ended, the increased police
powers it spawned remained in place.
Prohibition showed dramatically
how well-meaning people can make a
bad situation worse when they try to
use the law to control human nature.
While alcohol Prohibition has been repealed, its powers live on in the current drug laws. The biggest difference
in the two regimes is that other drugs
are a minor problem compared to alcohol. It has been possible to manipulate
what people believe about “controlled
substances” because so few have nearly
as much first hand experience with them
as with alcohol. And unlike our grandparents in the 1920s, today’s people have
no pre-prohibition experience of freedom
for comparison.
Drug prohibition has grown
slowly enough that we are like the frog
in water that is heated slowly. We could
have jumped out easily if we noticed
soon enough, back in the 1930s, but now
it will be more difficult to escape the cumulative oppression. If it’s not too late,
perhaps we will again experience the
greatest blessing of Prohibitions — the
process of ending them, since all prohibitions ultimately cause Americans to reexamine the fundamental purposes of
law and government, and to stop pushing them so far past the point of diminishing returns.
The roads to Hell and big government may be paved with good, even
dreamy, intentions. But the road to freedom and prosperity is maintained by the
hard work of folks who study and apply
the Constitution. The problem with a
pavement of “good intentions” is that
it’s almost always a one-w ay street and
once on it, it’s extremely difficult to get
off or change direction.
Bob Ramsey can be reached by
Email at: [email protected]
Are “patriot leaders” working for the enemy?
Check out my web site and judge for yourself!
www.goodbiz.com/tbks
30
Volume 7 No. 4
1
Beth, L.P. “Development of the U.S.
Constitution, 1877-1917” - Harper and Row,
New Yor k, 1971, pp.161-62 (cited in Musto)
2
Linn, Brian McAllister “The U.S.
Army and Counterinsur gency in the Philippine
war, 1899-1902” - U. of N. Carolina Press,
1989
3
Musto, David F., M.D. “The
American Disease - Origins of Narcotic
Control” - Oxford University Press, 1973,
1987 p. 25
4
Szasz, Thomas S. “Our Right to
Drugs” - Praeger, NY 1992
5
“Negro Cocaine ‘Fiends’ New
Southern Menace” - New York Times,
Sunday F eb. 8, 1914 http://
www.druglibr ary.org/ schaffer/histor y/
negro_cocaine_fiends.htm
6
A short artic le about Hobson by this
author is available online a t: http://
www.druglibrary.or g/schaffer/history/
7
Musto, p. 53
8
Congressional Record, House, 63rd
Congress, pp. 495-620
9
U.S. v. Jin Fuey Mo y, 225 Fed. Rep
1003 (13 May, 1915)
10
U.S . v. Friedman, 224 Fed. Rep 276
(1 June, 1915)
11
U.S . v. Jin Fuey Moy, 241 U.S. 394
(6 June, 1916)
12
Food Contr ol Act (cited in Musto,
p327 n28)
13
U.S . v. Doremus, 249 U .S. 86 (3
March, 1919) Webb et al v. U.S., 249 U.S.
96 (3 March, 1919)
14
Annual reports of the Commissioner of Prohibition for F iscal Years ending
June 30th
15
Kyvig, David E. “Repealing
National Prohibition” University of Chicago
Press, 1979 Lambert v. Yellowley et al., 272
U.S. 581
16
Coffey, Thomas M. “The Long Thir st
- Prohibition in America: 1920-1933” ch 1
17
Coffey - A summarization of
Remus’ career is available online at: http://
www.druglibr ary.org/schaffer/GENERAL/
remus.htm
19
U.S . v. Lanza, 260 U.S. 377 (cited
in Kyvig)
20
Car roll et al v. United States, 267
U.S. 132 (cited in Kyvig)
21
Olmstead et al v. United States,
277 U.S. 438 and 485 (cited in Kyvig)
22
Mencken, H.L. “Mr. Justice
Holmes” book review in the Amer ican
Mercury, May, 1932. (Mencken does not
give a case cite, but says it was decided
January 1, 1932)
23
Kyvig c h5 p74
24
Kyvig c h5 p73
25
Senator Morris Sheppard,
Associated Press dispatch, September 24,
1930 (cited in Kyvig Introduction, p2)
26
Kyvig ch7 pp 118-27
27
Fisher, Irving “The Noble
Experiment” - Pr ofessor of Economics, Yale
University 1930 pp 39-42
972-418-8993
www.antishyster.com
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